The present invention relates to the field of design and evaluation of ground contact systems for motor vehicles. In particular, the invention relates to a method for determining an effort transmitted between a vehicle wheel and a wheel support, use of this method for determining a transfer function of a vehicle and use of this method for predicting the comfort performance of a vehicle.
WO-A-014589 describes a method for predicting the comfort performance (level of noise and vibration) in the passenger space of a motor vehicle, the wheels of which are equipped with tyres. In this method, a global transfer function is obtained which makes it possible to restore the levels of noise or vibration inside the vehicle passenger space on the basis of efforts measured at the centre of the wheels. This method has the general advantage of making it possible to assess the performance of a prototype tyre-wheel assembly on a given vehicle without having the vehicle available, since the global transfer function of the vehicle has been established by means of a reference tyre-wheel assembly on a rolling means, and this same rolling means is used to measure efforts at the wheel centre of the prototype tyre-wheel assembly. For this measurement, it has been proposed to place the wheel to be fitted on a dynamometric hub with a fixed axis which makes it possible to record the efforts at the centre of the wheel according to three perpendicular directions. The efforts measured at the centre of the wheel are then multiplied by the global transfer function in order to obtain the levels of noise and vibration inside the passenger space, and thus to predict the comfort performance of the vehicle equipped with the prototype tyre-wheel assembly.